Readers nationwide say goodbye to Willie Morris

It was with great sadness that I read recently of the death of a man I never
met.

Willie Morris, the author of "My Dog Skip," a silly, charming, wonderful dog book/memoir about growing up in Yazoo City, Miss., died Aug. 2, 1999, at age
64.

Morris graduated from Yazoo City High School in 1952 and left his home
state for University of Texas at Austin. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and
studied history at Oxford University. Later he returned to Texas where he
edited a crusading liberal weekly newspaper before moving to New York City.
There, he was named associate editor of Harper's in 1963. He was named
editor-in-chief four years later, thus becoming the youngest editor of the
nation's oldest magazine.

He moved back to Mississippi in 1980. Morris wrote more than a dozen books,
both fiction and nonfiction, and had plans to write a book on baseball with
his son at the time of his death. His 1995 memoir, "My Dog Skip," has been
made into a movie to be released later this year.

A reader, Harry Boswell, was kind enough to send me clips from the Jackson,
Miss., Clarion-Ledger detailing the life and times of Morris, a Southerner
who lived much of his life in New York City before returning home to his roots.

"My perception of Willie Morris came not so much from his writings, but from
the way in which he used his popularity," Boswell said. "He could move in
the highest literary circles, yet you could also easily envision sitting on
the front porch with him, watching the sun set on another hot Mississippi
afternoon, talking about the weather, and life, and why the tomatoes aren't
setting flowers this year. He wasn't blind to the problems that come with
growing up Southern and white, but he tried to show that it didn't have to
be that way. He made folks feel OK about loving Mississippi."

Plus, he was a darn good writer. Few writers make me laugh aloud, but Morris
could do it by describing the hilarious adventures he had with Skip, his
black and white smooth-haired fox terrier.

For instance, Morris taught Skip to play football and drive a car. Yes, sir.

"I cut the lace on a football," explained Morris, "and taught Old Skip how
to carry it in his mouth, and how to hold it so he could avoid fumbles when
he was tackled. I instructed him how to move on a quarterback's signals, to
take a snap from center on the first bounce, and to follow me down the
field. 'Look at that dog playin' football,' someone passing by would shout."

Teaching Skip to drive was only slightly more difficult.

"Cruising through the fringes of town, I would spot a group of old men
standing around up the road. I would get Skip to prop himself against the
steering wheel, his black head peering out of the windshield, while I
crouched out of sight under the dashboard. Slowing the car to 10 or 15, I
would guide the steering wheel with my right hand while Skip, with his paws,
kept it steady. As we drove by the Blue Front Café, I could hear one of the
men shout: 'Look at that ol' dog drivin' a car!' "

Skip wasn't Lassie-perfect. He was a good sport, but he had his limits. One
day Morris and a buddy decided to play a trick on Skip, who loved above all
to fetch. Morris and his friend threw the stick for Skip to retrieve, then
hid in a tree.

"It took him half an hour to find us. We watched with superior smirks and
stifled laughter as he dropped the stick and roamed everywhere in his search
for us, looking on top of the garage and inside the toolshed and in the
gullies abutting the alley, even going into Mrs. Graeber's back porch and
into her wisteria vines in his quest. When he finally located us in the tree
he became extremely angry. He refused to let us out of that tree. Every time one of us
descended, he snapped at our feet with his long white teeth. We sought to
soothe him with assuaging talk: 'You're a good old boy, Skip,' but we might
just as well have been courting Hitler or Tojo or Mussolini. Since no one
was around to come to our rescue, we were trapped up there for over two
hours until Skip got tired and
dozed asleep."

The jokes he played on his New York friends were only a little more
elevated. When his good friend David Halberstam made the best-seller list
with "The Best and the Brightest," the rotund Morris called him pretending
to be the diet-doctor author just ahead of him on the list. He suggested
that they collaborate on a book to be called "The Biggest and the Fattest."

It makes me laugh again just to read of those silly adventures. Thank you,
Willie Morris. I'm sorry we never met.

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